Sea Snakes Seek Out Freshwater To Slake Thirst

[Achilles Tang]

Sea snakes may slither in saltwater, but they sip the sweet stuff. It has been the ?long-standing dogma? that the roughly 60 species of venomous sea snakes worldwide satisfy their drinking needs by drinking seawater, with internal salt glands filtering and excreting the salt. Experiments with three species of captive sea kraits captured near Taiwan, however, found that the snakes refused to drink saltwater even if thirsty ? and then would drink only freshwater or heavily diluted saltwater.

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